


tomorrow we meet

by acidtowns



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7089154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidtowns/pseuds/acidtowns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren didn’t like strawberries. Well, maybe he does now, but two years ago, he didn’t. There was just something about them that agitated him — perhaps it was their tanginess or their sweetness. Or their blaring red color. Eren had always been sensitive to colors. He liked the greens, the blues, and occasionally the grays, but nothing ever brighter. He liked the way I dressed, because I only wore dull-colored clothes.</p><p>(Challenge was to use every random word people gave me: strawberries, swollen, caress, hold, ghost, longing, graze.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	tomorrow we meet

Eren didn’t like **strawberries**. Well, maybe he does _now_ , but two years ago, he didn’t. There was just something about them that agitated him — perhaps it was their tanginess or their sweetness. Or their blaring red color. Eren had always been sensitive to colors. He liked the greens, the blues, and occasionally the grays, but nothing ever brighter. He liked the way I dressed, because I only wore dull-colored clothes.

I used to like strawberries. They were fairly expensive back in the day, so having them was almost a delicacy. I don’t know how much they cost now — probably a lot more considering inflation — but it doesn't matter. I don’t buy them any more.

He was a poet. For days on end, he would sit around and pour his heart into poems he would never let me read. He said they were personal, _very important_ to him. Once I found him tearing up while writing one. It was, as I later discovered when his **swollen** red eyes had reduced to puffiness, about his mother. That was the first time he had ever talked about her. She was beautiful and kind as mothers should be. Her favorite fruit was strawberries, and her favorite color was yellow. He told me nothing else.

Months later, I came across another one of his poems. He left it sitting on the kitchen counter, and though I knew better than to read it, I couldn’t help but peek. His words captured the essence of a woman from the cracks of her lips to the eyelash on her cheek. She was the sun on a rainy day; unexpected but pleasant, warm but distant. He caught me reading this piece, but he didn’t care. All he said was “You should read the rest.”

When it came to perspectives, he saw the world differently. A blink to him was a flicker of lashes that spoke empathy, a tear was a warrior’s cry to its motherland. His poetry made me wonder how he would describe me. What fruits and colors would he associate with my visage? What words would he use to create sympathy with my blinks and tears? I thought about that for some time until I realized he only wrote about people he knew well.

Eren didn’t like spending money. He preferred the home-cooked meals to eating out, and he preferred paranormal documentaries on Youtube to watching movies at theaters. On our first Valentine’s together, he **caressed** my cheek and **held** my hand. We ate dinner with George Michael playing in the background. He didn’t like George Michael either — neither of us did.

Despite everything he hated, he loved everything. When I wanted to throw away that broken chair in the back corner, he told me to keep it so he could turn it into a shelf. It now sits in the living room, collecting dust with the books he had left behind — everything from the collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s Greatest Works to Calculus for Dummies. He wanted to be a computer programmer, not a poet.

We didn’t know much about each other aside from the occasional fun fact. He used to have a dog named Snaps. Snaps didn’t have a fourth leg. Eren also used to swim, but he gave that up when he almost drowned (he was saved by a lifeguard named Levi — a strange coincidence). What facts he knows about me, I don’t know myself. To him, I may be a distant memory, an ex-partner who has the same name as the man who once saved him. To me, he’s just that. A passing memory, a **ghost** of the past.

I met him by chance. The sun was out, but the rain was pouring. I was never one to check the weather, so the rain caught me off guard on the way to the bus stop. It was no bother, except the bus was late and the stop had nothing but a measly bench with blue paint that was beginning to peel. Amidst being drenched from head to toe, someone approached me and held an umbrella over my head. His close proximity and polite mannerisms presented him as a gentlemen, but also a serial killer. He asked me if I was waiting for 56, and I told him I was. With a nod, he stepped away, taking the umbrella with him. Seconds later, he scooted back over. The sun continued to shine through the rain, and twenty minutes thereafter, the bus came.

He took the seat next to me (even though there were plenty other open seats) and introduced himself as Eren. I told him I wasn’t interested. We met again a week later. And a week after that. One month in, I found out he worked in the building behind mine. We began going out for coffee, then lunch. Then I told him I was interested, and we started from there.

We haven’t seen each other in a while now. I take the earlier bus, he probably doesn’t go for coffee any more (he never really liked coffee).

On the day of our break-up, there were no hurt feelings, or at least, not much. He had the chicken parmesan and diet coke for dinner; I had the teriyaki salmon and unsweetened tea. We took our first bites in silence — no groans of delight, no jumbled words of dismay — and when he set his silverware down and pushed his hands in-between his thighs, I knew he wanted to say something, but he didn't know how to say it. So I said it for him: “This isn’t working.” He nodded slowly, then withdrew his hands from his lap and continued eating. When we finished, I parted with a kiss on my left cheek and he went with the same amount of money he had arrived with. It was Valentine’s Day.

Sometimes I would walk by the fresh produce aisle at the market and catch a whiff of their strawberries. Other times I would come across a book of poems at the local bookstore. There isn’t any **longing** , but there will always be memories. Thoughts. Questions. _Can we try again_?

The answer is _maybe_.

I go back to the cafe we used to have our morning coffee at. It brings back blissful thoughts — thoughts that have long been cast aside in face of other life complications, thoughts that have been locked away in a vault. Like good secrets, they're ones I keep to myself, not necessarily because they’re bad but because no one needs to know.

Eren didn’t like secrets, despite having many of his own. Though he hated strawberries, he liked this cafe’s strawberry milkshake.

So that’s what I order. Small strawberry milkshake, no whip cream.

And just as I receive my drink, the door bell chimes and a second later, I hear my name.

(He only called me by _Levi_. Never _babe_ , never _darling_. I preferred it that way.)

I turn, holding his all time favorite strawberry milkshake, and he stands there with a laptop tucked under one arm and an expression that’s too honest for the average joe. He starts grappling for words, carelessly almost, but that’s all right. I may not know him, but I know him well enough.

“Do you have time?” I ask, gesturing at an empty table for two in the little corner. ( _Our table_.)

He nods and shuffles over to put his laptop down. “I'll - I’ll be right back.” And he goes to order his usual: small strawberry milkshake, extra whip-cream. When he returns, he sits down across me. We talk. I ask him about his school, he asks me about my work. At one point, he opens up his laptop and I ask him if he’s still writing poems. He shows me a video game he has developed. The protagonist there has the oddest quirks — picking his nails at the most inconvenient times, walking with the left foot first, holding a cup by its rim. It doesn’t take me long to realize they’re _my_ quirks.

At another point, his hand accidentally **grazes** mine, but we both know it's no accident when he leaves it there. We continue to talk about everything and everything else. And when he starts rambling about how this cold weather's making his lips dry, I reach over and brush the eyelash off his cheek. That's when I realize he's wearing a yellow turtleneck. He likes bright colors now.

Sometime later, George Michael plays. He shuts the laptop then, shoves his hands in-between his thighs, and drops his gaze. He sits in silence for a moment, as if recollecting his thoughts, and when he looks up, hesitation takes refuge in his pressed lips and locked jaw. I know he wants to say something, but he doesn’t know how to say it. But before I can say it for him again, he takes the initiative and asks, "Can we try again?"

This time, the answer is _yes_.

**Author's Note:**

> as some of you may know, i've dipped out of the snk fandom so i won't be writing any more new fics. the ones i'm posting have been previously published on my [tumblr](http://komlin.tumblr.com/) & i thought it would be nice to post them here, all in one place. i thank you all for your support through my snk writing journey!


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